Ratings of age of acquisition of 299 words across 25 languages: Is there a cross-linguistic order of words?

We present a new set of subjective age-of-acquisition (AoA) ratings for 299 words (158 nouns, 141 verbs) in 25 languages from five language families (Afro-Asiatic: Semitic languages; Altaic: one Turkic language: Indo-European: Baltic, Celtic, Germanic, Hellenic, Slavic, and Romance languages; Niger-Congo: one Bantu language; Uralic: Finnic and Ugric languages). Adult native speakers reported the age at which they had learned each word. We present a comparison of the AoA ratings across all languages by contrasting them in pairs. This comparison shows a consistency in the orders of ratings across the 25 languages. The data were then analyzed (1) to ascertain how the demographic characteristics of the participants influenced AoA estimations and (2) to assess differences caused by the exact form of the target question (when did you learn vs. when do children learn this word); (3) to compare the ratings obtained in our study to those of previous studies; and (4) to assess the validity of our study by comparison with quasi-objective AoA norms derived from the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDI). All 299 words were judged as being acquired early (mostly before the age of 6 years). AoA ratings were associated with the raters’ social or language status, but not with the raters’ age or education. Parents reported words as being learned earlier, and bilinguals reported learning them later. Estimations of the age at which children learn the words revealed significantly lower ratings of AoA. Finally, comparisons with previous AoA and MB-CDI norms support the validity of the present estimations. Our AoA ratings are available for research or other purposes

Fundusze inwestycyjne rynku nieruchomości w Polsce na tle doświadczeń zagranicznych

Funds investing in the Polish real estate market have been functioning since 2004, but they have lived through both the times of the 2006–2008 boom and the times of the 2009–2014 crisis. The first close-end funds were established in 2004 and were originally intended to close down after eight years. However, their results did not guarantee the return expected by investors. The purpose of the study is to evaluate the performance of the Polish investment funds operating on a young, ten-year-old market in the context of the experience of mature markets with a long history of funds investing in real estate. The paper presents the cause and effect analysis of the impact of macroeconomic factors on the funds’ results as well as of behavioral factors contributing to low interest in the real estate investments with the participation of Polish investment funds operating on the Polish real estate market.</jats:p

Ocena siły fundamentalnej spółek sektora spożywczego na Giełdzie Papierów Wartościowych w Warszawie

The article presents the proposal to apply the (universal) method of assessing the fundamental strength of a company with an example of the Polish food sector. The proposed method belongs to the group of methods of multidimensional comparative analysis and is applicable to the directly immeasurable categories (economic and financial standing, fundamental strength). The problem to be solved is the method of measuring the fundamental strength (attractiveness) of a company. The aim of the paper is to assess the fundamental strength of the food companies in Poland and to identify areas of use the results of research in practical analyses. The article describes how to construct such a measure and how to use it practically. The empirical example included data of food firms listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange over years 2010–2014. The article presents method for assessing the investment attractiveness of enterprises comprising the food sector in terms of their fundamental strength, namely the long-term investment in their shares.</jats:p

Dwujęzyczność u progu edukacji szkolnej – interdyscyplinarny projekt badawczy

The paper describes a Polish research project which aims at creating a cognitive and linguistic profile of the Polish-English bilingual child at the school entrance age. With the increase in the number of bilingual children due to economic migrations, researchers, educators and practitioners are often faced with diagnostic dilemmas which arise from similarities in bilingual language acquisition in natural settings and Specific Language Impairment (SLI). The study, which aims at disentangling the effects of bilingualism from those of SLI, is a part of European cooperation programme COST Action IS0408/Bi-SLI. The aim of the Polish team is to create and test a set of tools which can be used for developing norms of typical bilingual development for Polish-English children entering school education

COVID-19 first lockdown as a unique window into language acquisition: what you do (with your child) matters

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting closure of daycare centers worldwide, led to unprecedented changes in children’s learning environments. This period of increased time at home with caregivers, with limited access to external sources (e.g., daycares) provides a unique opportunity to examine the associations between the caregiver-child activities and children’s language development. The vocabularies of 1742 children aged 8-36 months across 13 countries and 12 languages were evaluated at the beginning and end of the first lockdown period in their respective countries (from March to September 2020). Children who had less passive screen exposure and whose caregivers read more to them showed larger gains in vocabulary development during lockdown, after controlling for SES and other caregiver-child activities. Children also gained more words than expected (based on normative data) during lockdown; either caregivers were more aware of their child’s development or vocabulary development benefited from intense caregiver-child interaction during lockdown